Day: February 18, 2019

Not everybody worries about postapocalyptic medicine. It’s the stuff of science fiction. And Tretinoin Cream, a prescription cream that reduces wrinkles, is low-priority in the first aid kit.

Not in my circle.

The wrinkle cream scare began during a Scrabble game when a friend mentioned she was stockpiling medicine in case of a disaster.

“Are you expecting zombies?”

“I am scared of zombies,” she admitted, “but it’s mostly climate change.” There have been so many severe floods in this state that there is now a Flood Center in Iowa City.

After the Zombies and Martians invade, or the floods and wildfires devastate, will we be able to get our Tretinoin?

According to the AARP, the majority of women over 45 take supplements and prescription medicines. And one wonders: where will we get calcium, vitamins, antidepressants, blood thinner, blood pressure medicine, arthritis medicine, Penicillin, thyroid medicine, and other pills?

At the Scrabble game, we worried about prescription wrinkle cream. We need dewy skin when we’re living in caves and abandoned houses. There will be much looking in mirrors.

In my family all the women have lip lines, those wrinkles that sometimes develop above the mouth. Makeup experts say they’re from smoking and pouting. Huh! Mine are from squinting in the sun on long bicycle rides past cornfields and soybean fields. On a 25-mile bicycle ride in the midwest, you do not find much shade.

The precription wrinkle cream doesn’t seem to have done much for me, but I confess I hardly ever remember to put it on.

Nonetheless, I’ve faithfully refilled my prescription, and do have four tubes to go. Naturally, they’ll all expire before I use them. I hesitated to bring this up with the alpha stockpiler.

Apparently the military, concerned about having to throw out expensive drugs every few years, asked the FDA to do a study of expiration dates. The FDA found that “90% of more than 100 drugs, both prescription and over-the-counter, were perfectly good to use even 15 years after the expiration date.”